If there’s a chill to the morning air, then it must be October. This month’s state of the industry report takes an overview of the so-called hidden gems that dealers believe have a high upside for potential growth, but may be viewed by some as flying under the radar simply because they are a bit to the left of the mainstream office technology dealer’s menu of traditional services.
We spoke to a variety of dealers to learn more about their favorite nontraditional offerings, and we’ll kick off this week by asking them how they spread the word about these little-known (or lesser-known) offerings, as well as the vertical markets they could potentially address.
For Axion Business Technologies, all opportunities are vetted through an intensive quarterly review of the client base, according to Bob Ferland, Axion president. The process was born as a scale for measuring client satisfaction on a 1 to 10 scale that has evolved into a proactive, one-stop shopping guide that evaluates clients on 10 different aspects. Sections seven through nine speak to Axion’s managed IT services, provides updates on its MPS offerings and other products it can service.
“We’re very aggressive with customer reviews to talk about things including but also outside of copiers,” he said. “It’s also a chance to talk about the less-heralded products available. We’ve had a lot of success with it. We’re out there talking copiers and discussing the non-sexy stuff. But we’re also looking around the office from ceiling to floor, all four walls, and everything in between.
“We train our CSRs on how to do the reviews. Everyone else talks speeds and feeds, so we pull out the binder and talk about what we did for a college down the street. We’ll go through the whole binder and show them how we were able to help in different ways. The clients are blown away by it.”
Community Involvement
Developing relationships inside and outside of the client context has been critical to the success of Repeat Business Sytems (RBS). Dr. Dawn Abbuhl, president of RBS, notes that she is on the board of directors for 12 local businesses/associations/chambers of commerce. Attending numerous business-related functions provides her the opportunity to discuss both the mainstream and nontraditional offerings in RBS’ portfolio.
“It involves a lot of hard work and social media involvement,” she said. “We use HubSpot and search engine optimization in drawing people to our website. Being involved in the community helps, as well as going to events and talking to people.”
When it comes to interactive products that onlookers can engage with in person, Pearson-Kelly Technology takes every opportunity to showcase it at both sponsored and hosted events. Once the audience begins to tinker with the product, notes Director of Sales Lee Flood, the quicker and easier it becomes to engage them in a conversation. That gets the wheels turning in the buyers’ minds.
“When you have a tangible item, something the public can interact with and get excited about, you want them to get their hands on it,” Flood said. “We’ve had a lot of success with these events. You never know when you’ll have that person who says, ‘Oh my goodness, I know exactly where that fits.’”
Targeting Customers
When dealers cannot put the financial marketing muscle behind less-requested/heralded products, that is the time for technology to do its part. Offix is using automation and artificial intelligence to do some of the heavy lifting for the products that aren’t as heavily marketed. Matteo Recanatini, marketing director of Offix, notes the dealer is currently revamping its website to better present its products and have it structured in a way that allows artificial intelligence to do the heavy lifting. Dynamic web pages can provide suggestions to visitors that are based on previous visits to the site.
“If we know who the customer is through our CRM, the content of the page that is viewed will be populated with items that may be of interest to the particular visitor,” Recanatini said. “We use a lot of inbound marketing, so we can let the people come to us instead of cold calling, which we’re sunsetting in favor of other activities. “Inbound marketing allows us to segment people a lot better. We then analyze the buying behavior by vertical—we’ll put customers coming to our website or attending our events in buckets. So we’ll know what less-heralded products may be complementary to what they’re looking for or to what they already have. It makes communication a lot more efficient that way.”
